


It's okay to feel things, dammit.

by lbk_princen



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abusive Parents, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Child Neglect, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, exploration of dave's past, well. parent singular
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 06:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5858209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbk_princen/pseuds/lbk_princen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave Strider has always had it hard. Even when he wouldn't admit it to himself.<br/>///<br/>Since I got to The Great Strider Hug of 2015, I wanted to write out a fic about how Dave felt doing that, even if it was only 200 words. And, well. I wrote this. I just have a lot of emotions concerning Dave, okay? He is such a good character and I want to keep him safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's okay to feel things, dammit.

**Author's Note:**

> ~~in case u didn't read the tags this does get into Dave's mistreatment as a child be forewarned~~

Through his entire life growing up, every single moment was a struggle for Dave Strider. The first day of kindergarten was interesting, considering that Bro had sent little four-year-old Dave out of the apartment with an ironic Hello Kitty backpack and a pat on the head, apparently expecting him to walk the four miles to the elementary school. Dave had been too scared of what Bro might say if he went back, so he wandered around downtown Houston until he was completely lost and started to cry. A nice lady had stopped him and asked if he was lost. Dave had nodded, still crying, and told the lady the address of his apartment. They walked back together, and Dave thanked her quietly, rubbing his eyes with his little hands. The next day, Bro sent him out with a map.

Kindergarten was also the first time in Dave’s life where he received consistent meals. Every day at ten o’clock was snack time, and one o'clock was lunch, without fail. He got cookies and apple juice, and didn’t have to jump through any metaphysical or literal hoops to be allowed to eat them. Some of the other four-year-olds tried to be friendly, but Dave didn’t know what to do with the positive interactions and stayed silent. The bullies, Dave knew how to deal with. A kid told him he was a poopyface, and Dave responded with curse words that would make any respectable grandmother faint. The teacher called his guardian, and when Dave came home, Bro gave him a high five. 

Grade school wasn’t much better. Kids thought he was weird, teachers were baffled by how quiet and mumbly he was in class compared to the verbose expositions that were his schoolwork. People asked him why he wore sunglasses all the time, but when he took them off everybody stared or laughed or whispered.

In middle school, he was called names, and learned how to ride the bus. He’d stay at school as long as he could, sitting on the steps with his beaten up DS in his hands, and wait until the very last possible bus to his apartment complex would arrive. His ribs and arms and spine would ache with the expectation of what going home meant. From the moment he stepped in the door, he had to be on edge to cross the gauntlet of an apartment to get in his room. Cafeteria food became a blessing, because dinner was unreliable and often consisted of stale doritos. 

The internet was a Godsend, because he could express himself without being told to shut up, or to speak up, and if he did get flack he could just troll the shit out of them with little to no repercussions. John, Jade, and Rose were his first ever friends, and he was so eager to impress them and get along with them at first. It was hard for him to let go his irony facade, however, because as he had learned from Bro, expressing any true interest or genuine like for a thing will only get you made fun of, or thrown down a flight of stairs.

Then SBURB happened.

Then everything he’d ever known, however shitty it might have been, was torn up from around him, and he was struggling more than ever. Struggling to stay alive, struggling to stay sane in a Land where every second of deafening gear grinding threatened to send him into a panic attack, struggling to accept the fact that Bro was  _ dead, _ struggling with the weight of each and every Dead Dave on his shoulders. He struggled with fighting. He struggled with physical closeness with his friends. He struggled with the mind games of the trolls. He struggled to keep himself cool under all this pressure, to make sure no one, least of all himself, could see our make sense of how incredibly awful he felt about all of his struggles.

When Dave met Jade for the first time on LOFAF, she hugged him without warning. Everything in his brain shut down from the contact, leaving him paralysed with his heart racing at a velocity Speedy Gonzalez would envy. He had swallowed his panic and mumbled something about frogs. Luckily, Jade was perceptive enough to realise his discomfort, and didn't try to hug him again. John didn’t pick up on it quite so fast, but Dave was too guilty to tell his best friend that their brohugs felt like violations. Rose always stood too close, but Dave didn’t mind as much, he found. She smelled good, and there was comfort in their assbackwards, roundabout, wordplay-riddled conversations. 

Then there was Dirk.

The younger, hotter version of the man who had both actively and passively terrorized Dave’s life literally since day one. They stood their ground. They talked. Dave felt uneasy, and he struggled to stay calm, and, like always, he let none of that show through. He would be cool as a cucumber.

Until he wasn’t.

He found himself spilling to Dirk all of the things he’d struggled to keep bottled up, the things about his Bro that saying aloud felt like relief and heresy all at once. Despite everything, he still struggled with the realization of just how  _ bad _ everything was, and his amazement and scorn and numb understanding poured out of him like a river. He needed the reconcile, not to forgive his Bro but to forgive himself for his struggles. He needed to know for himself and himself alone that he was allowed to feel.

Through his childhood, Dave had never been a physically affectionate person. Karkat had flipped his understanding of how another person’s touch could feel completely upside down and inside out. He had begun to enjoy hugs, and be comfortable with contact beyond a brushing of knuckles. He’d never had that kind of closeness with his Bro.

Dirk had so far proven to be a suitable, cathartic proxy.

Dave’s heart didn’t flutter, it didn’t race; it pounded. He felt it in his chest, heard it in the space behind his eyes. He mumbled apologies to Dirk, tried to wipe his sweaty palms as subtly as he could. 

So far, Dave had been content with just Karkat’s closeness. He didn’t need to be close with his other friends, because he had Karkat. Seeing Dirk, though, made him ache for that contact with his parent that he’d never experienced. Although Dave decided, no. Bro was dead, Bro missed his chance to hold Dave like he actually cared. So when Dave fell into Dirk’s lap with his arms tight around Dirk’s waist, still mumbling apologies, he didn’t do it for Bro. He did it for himself, and for Dirk. Dirk as  _ Dirk _ , not as a proxy. 

When Dirk’s hand rested on Dave’s shoulder, he shuddered out a sigh of relief, a sigh of  _ thank God it’s okay, thank God I’m okay. _ It wasn’t a terribly comfortable hug, and it didn’t solve all Dave’s problems, didn’t erase all his struggles, but it was  _ good. _ It was from someone sturdy and warm and powerfully there, and Dave felt  _ held up, _ he felt  _ supported, _ and for fucking once it was coming from another Strider. 


End file.
